Little Jane Doe

On February 28, 1983, two men searching for scrap metal in the basement of an abandoned apartment building at 5635 Clemens Avenue in St. Louis struck a cigarette lighter in the dark. What the flame illuminated has haunted the city ever since.

On the cold concrete floor lay the body of a child. She was face down, her wrists bound behind her back with red and white nylon rope, wearing only a bloodstained yellow sweater. Her fingernails were painted red. She had no head.

She has never been identified.

For forty years, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has been trying to learn this child's name. Investigators have filed missing persons bulletins in every state, placed advertisements in Black magazines and newspapers nationwide, traveled across the country following leads, consulted psychics, and submitted her DNA to every available database. They have ruled out approximately twenty other children. They have not found her.

Little Jane Doe tells the full story: the West End neighborhood where she was found, the forensic evidence that established how she died and what was done to her afterward, the FBI's designation of the case as the only known child decapitation in the United States at the time, the five-minute burial service attended by weeping detectives, the decades of cold-case investigation, the 2023 Reddit post from a sibling searching for a missing sister that may be the most significant lead in forty years, and where the case stands today.

She was given the name Precious Hope by the investigators who never stopped looking for her. Her real name remains unknown.

Little Jane Doe is Book 3 in the Gateway Crime series - true crime narratives from St. Louis and its surroundings.